I like how they literally erased a major feature from Cataclysm. At least I think so; Reforging was Cata right?

Yes. Although I honestly hate it. While I understand how it can fully work, it also makes it so you get one drop at an Ilvl and that's it. You have no interest in ever seeing another set of those gloves or whatever. Plus all it's done is add another chore you have to go through by going to the optimization sites, retooling all your gear, and putting in all the right gems and enchants.

While that's good for the crafters, it offers absolutely nothing in terms of customization since the stats don't allow for that.

Reforge as it stands is pointless. For my shadow priest it's literally max hit then everything into haste. It's not fun and doesn't provide any customization beyond doing it the right way or the wrong way. It was a stupid system in the first place, though the IDEA wasn't bad, but the implementation was.

It'll actually cause people to look at individual items more. Currently people can just look at the ilvl to determine whether a piece of gear is a good upgrade for them, as reforging allows you to change the secondary stats if they aren't ideal. For example if I have 450 gloves on my fury warrior I know that the 455 gloves that drop will be an upgrade for me even if they have haste on them, since I can change that into a secondary stat that doesn't suck for fury. In WoD that item might not be an upgrade despite the higher ilvl, I might wait for one with better secondary stats since I have no way of changing what is on there. You're going to have to do math for every piece of gear you replace unless the ilvl change is huge (is this gain of 4 ilvls/40 Strength worth losing 100 crit?). That's going to get obnoxious fast.

I get that people think reforging is this big burden when you get new gear. Every time I get a new piece of gear, I end up having to reforge 3-4 pieces to get as close as possible to hit/expertise caps again. Since they are removing hit/expertise, I think it would have been in a much better position of feeling optional & giving you some flexibility in what gear you take. Will be sad to see it go.

Reforge as it stands is pointless. For my shadow priest it's literally max hit then everything into haste. It's not fun and doesn't provide any customization beyond doing it the right way or the wrong way. It was a stupid system in the first place, though the IDEA wasn't bad, but the implementation was.

It definitely works better for some classes/specs than others. With my brewmaster monk, there isn't a clear "best" secondary stat after hit/expertise cap so your reforges are based on trying to round yourself out vs. specializing.

Do I want to focus on crit to increase the chance that my dodge cooldown is procing reliably?Do I want to focus on haste to have more resources for active mitigation?Do I want to focus on mastery to potentially mitigate more damage?

For my monk I went with B for the first raid cluster, A for the second, and a combo of A & C for the third. That was a pretty fun "decision" to keep making about the gear I was getting, and it felt like the way Blizzard wanted reforging to work for every class/spec.

I like how they literally erased a major feature from Cataclysm. At least I think so; Reforging was Cata right?

Yah, it was Cata. However, this is kind of consistant with their design policy. Reforging was introduced as an experiment in ways to allow you to "get the most" out of gear that might not be exactly perfect for your spec. I think it was originally intended to make improving your performance "easier", but ended up just adding a largely unneeded level of complexity to piece-meal upgrades (yay, i got new boots. Fuck, now i have to reforge / regem half my shit to minmax again.....). Seems like they have just decided to axe it (and the whole here is a belt with 4 gem slots, go nuts) shit and work on adding (what they hope) will be more interesting tertiary stats (like a stat that buffs aoe damage, or reduces cooldown times).

All in all, i kind of like the change.

One thing is somewhat unclear to me though. They mention that there will nolonger be "stat specific gear" (ie, Intellect plate). Does that mean that when my paladin in his full ret set changes spec from ret to holy, ALL of his currently equipped gear shifts from Strength + secondary / tertiary stats to Int + same secondary / Tertiary stats? If so, then FUCKING HELL YES. SOOO god damned tired of having 40 odd bag slots taken up by gear on my druid.....

I haven't followed Warcraft lore since the Burning Crusade. What kind Metzen shit happened? How bad is it?

It's parallel timelines: Garrosh is a sore loser so he goes back to pre-WC1 Draenor and said "You don't need to drink that demon blood because I've brought back plans for war machines and weapons from half a century in the future instead". So the 'normal' original Horde is replaced by an Iron Horde and the Dark Portal gets aimed back at the main timeline i.e. us (because otherwise who gives a shit?: "Garrosh wants to conquer a parallel Azeroth? Great. More power to him. Keeps him out of our way")

"You're really a good person, aren't you? So, there's no path for you to take here. Go home. This isn't a place for someone like you."

The item squish and the changes to reforging, geming, gearing in general is something that really interests me. If I'm in the mood for an MMOG and Wildstar doesn't snag me, I might actually play WOW again.

Why would the item squish interest anybody? If it actually works the way they want it to it should make zero functional difference. You could just have an addon that divided all the hp by 100 for display and it would be the same thing.

Why would the item squish interest anybody? If it actually works the way they want it to it should make zero functional difference. You could just have an addon that divided all the hp by 100 for display and it would be the same thing.

I duno, just a feeling. I last played in WOTLK and when I see people with a billion dps it's just goofy as fuck and unrelatable.

Why would the item squish interest anybody? If it actually works the way they want it to it should make zero functional difference. You could just have an addon that divided all the hp by 100 for display and it would be the same thing.

I duno, just a feeling. I last played in WOTLK and when I see people with a billion dps it's just goofy as fuck and unrelatable.

I guess they are really banking on the movie to bring people in. The eta on this is Nov/Dec 2014. They have stated there are no content patches coming until this xpac.

I don't really think that's feasible. I was expecting July. The last expansion cycle was about 21-22 months between Cata and MOP. If they do that again with about 21-22 months, it should release in summer 2014.

Also while I don't think they'll do a pure raid patch, I do think they'll release some content stuff in the interim, possibly a dungeon or something that relates to the timeless isle, or some more faction stuff, etc.

I haven't followed Warcraft lore since the Burning Crusade. What kind Metzen shit happened? How bad is it?

It's parallel timelines: Garrosh is a sore loser so he goes back to pre-WC1 Draenor and said "You don't need to drink that demon blood because I've brought back plans for war machines and weapons from half a century in the future instead". So the 'normal' original Horde is replaced by an Iron Horde and the Dark Portal gets aimed back at the main timeline i.e. us (because otherwise who gives a shit?: "Garrosh wants to conquer a parallel Azeroth? Great. More power to him. Keeps him out of our way")

Going back in time to use future weapons to conquer the future. A plot so brilliantly stupid it could only come from Metzen.

The whole point of time traveling with future weapons is they're super weapons. M16 vs. Muskets. /sigh.

Sure, given a rational actor. However, Garrosh wants revenge and validation of his world-view in equal measure. Getting (what he sees as) the 'real' Horde upgunned and up-to-speed and then bringing them back as an army at his back to show everyone else that he was right all along, the orcish culture is superior to those mongrel lesser races, and so on and so forth probably seems more important to him than opening the alt-Dark Portal to alt-Azeroth and flattening everyone there.

Mind you, I'm sort of hoping that Garrosh gets killed off in a hilarious and karmic manner in 6.0 or 6.1 anyway. Preferably by a pissed-off Grom who finds out that he's been manipulated by this stranger since day one and the whole "Iron Horde" thing originated as a glorified temper tantrum by a sore loser.

"You're really a good person, aren't you? So, there's no path for you to take here. Go home. This isn't a place for someone like you."

I guess they are really banking on the movie to bring people in. The eta on this is Nov/Dec 2014. They have stated there are no content patches coming until this xpac.

I don't really think that's feasible. I was expecting July. The last expansion cycle was about 21-22 months between Cata and MOP. If they do that again with about 21-22 months, it should release in summer 2014.

Also while I don't think they'll do a pure raid patch, I do think they'll release some content stuff in the interim, possibly a dungeon or something that relates to the timeless isle, or some more faction stuff, etc.

They aren't doing any more patches between now and WoD, but they also aren't aiming for Nov/Dec 2014.

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Q: "Typically after you announce something it is another year, but we are at Patch 5.4 now. What content do you have planned for between now and then?" A: "Any content we do now will delay the expansion by the same amount of time it took us to make that content. We are completely focused on making the next expansion and will try to deliver that as soon as we can, hopefully on a shorter cycle than players are imagining, but you never know, we will have to see."

Q: "Typically that would be in the Winter of next year. Does that mean it is a goal to bring it in to Summer or Spring?" A: "Well certainly the goal is before that, but we'll see, it is very hard for us to predict."

I'd read what they said above, and assume that meant we were actually going to get it in Nov/Dec 2014 because they always miss their target, but they were able to release MoP patch content on a pretty brisk schedule so maybe they'll actually pull a summer release off.

If they don't get it out by summer, with absolutely no filler in the meantime, they won't have enough people still interested to put up with their ridiculous alternative timeline Metzen wank Cataclysm 2.0

I'd be really surprised if this took a year before it was ready. Someone asked a dev if they were shooting for spring/summer and they said that they'd hope to have it done before then.

I remember them saying that after Cataclysm, they were "hoping" to go to an expansion every 12-14 months

This is Blizzard. They may want to have an expansion out by April/May, but I'll be surprised if they get it out before Oct/Nov.

Counterpoint:Haven't they released expansions at times that stole other MMO's thunder? Could they be trying to make a spring release in an attempt to torpedo Wildstar? I'm pretty sure they're not overly worried about Wildstar, but with WOW's sub numbers substantially down from peak, this wouldn't be a shocking move.

I would like to thank Vladimir Putin for ensuring that every member of the NPR news staff has had to say "Pussy Riot" on the air multiple times.

My sense of order is still disrupted by Death Knights being the only Hero class. I wish they would add some other Hero Class. Mountain King would be nice. But every class got homogenized into blandness anyway in Cataclysm, so I guess it doesn't matter much.

I've still been playing the Chinese version off and on (since early this year I think) and finally reached Northrend at my ludicrously slow pace, and man, WOTLK really was the best. It's been maybe three years since I wandered around there and it was like hopping back on a friendly horse.

I even felt saucy and did Utgarde Keep since I knew I would remember what to do even if I couldn't spend the time to decipher anything and after 9 minutes in the queue (that was sort of disappointingly long) the random group blew through it in like 12 minutes. The balance on everything is so out of whack now... I assume it is sort of 'right' in Pandaria (I never did play that), but at the low(er) levels it is really bizarre. Maybe item squishing will fix that, I dunno.

My sense of order is still disrupted by Death Knights being the only Hero class. I wish they would add some other Hero Class. Mountain King would be nice. But every class got homogenized into blandness anyway in Cataclysm, so I guess it doesn't matter much.

They said long ago that the DKs are no longer considered a "Hero" class, and there wouldn't be any further classes that start like them. With the kickstart to 90 with the new expansion, their 'start a new character' advantage is removed, too.

Word I've heard is that it's already in a limited beta with a proper closed beta ready to go. Also head that they've reworked their teams to crank out content more quickly. I reckon they know what's riding on this and that they'll get it out. The game they're actually worried about is GW2 and my hunch is that it's at least as much to do with a sense of professional pride as sales. By that I mean I can almost guarantee they're looking at the two content patches a month GW2 pushes out, thinking "goddammit, we're fucking Blizzard and they're showing us up", and getting irritated enough to kick things into a higher gear. So I'm going to go with the optimistic end of things and say March.

I dunno. I'm still kind of stoked about this. A friend who works there gave me a copy of MoP when I had no intention of buying it and I came away impressed. I'm an absolute sucker for TBC and Outland, so the setting and feel work for me. Seeing all of the features nice and condensed on wowhead in an easy to decipher fashion made me more excited, too. Still won't be like the old days in terms of my playtime, but that's cool. Nothing is like it was in the old days in terms of my playtime.

I need to share this because I love embarrassing, super-breathless predictions.

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That drive, and that passion, is what is going to lead this game to the next decade of its life. Mark my words: November 8, 2013 will be looked back at as the turning point for WoW. It is a fixed point in time, when what came before was one way, and what came after was another.

I like that he's treating a video game announcement, not a game, not an actual game...